It began just hours after Nadia Lockyer resigned from her post as an Alameda County supervisor.

That night, at an annual dinner for East Bay labor officials in Oakland, more than a half-dozen aspiring candidates approached Supervisor Keith Carson to express interest in the job.

Because when elected officials leave office midstream, the path to replace them is a political appointment followed later by an election. And, whoever gets appointed will of course have a leg up in the race.

"While I respect them individually, it was a little uncomfortable knowing full well that they would want to go for permanency," Carson said this week.

So Carson has a plan to avoid a potentially messy and contentious political appointment process.

He wants to appoint a veritable Girl Scout to replace Lockyer, who resigned last Friday when claims of drug use and an extramarital relationship surfaced after an early morning alleged assault at a Newark motel in February.

To help calm the troubled waters, Carson has suggested bringing back retired Supervisor Gail Steele for an encore. Steele, 75, retired in 2011 after 18 years of service.

"I believe that appointing former Supervisor Gail Steele to the seat for the interim period would be good government at its best, allowing the current Board of Supervisors, their staff, the department heads and others to minimize the obvious political distractions that will occur if we appoint anyone else for such a short time," Carson wrote.

I think Carson is onto something.

Steele's status as a veteran politician and neutral party with no interest in running for the seat makes her the perfect place-holder until the next election.

Steele is an old-school politician who takes her cue from voters, not party leaders whose desires don't always jibe with voters' needs.

For 17 years, Steele never endorsed a political candidate because she never believed voters needed advice from politicians about who to vote for.

But in her last year of public office, she broke that rule for good reason, endorsing former state Sen. Liz Figueroa over Nadia Lockyer to replace her. "I endorsed Liz (Figueroa) for two reasons: (Lockyer's) lack of experience and the money," Steele said, referring to the $1.6 million war chest amassed for Nadia Lockyer's campaign run by her husband, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer.

During her tenure on the board, Steele fought hard for health issues, especially those involving children. She spent a dozen years fighting for a policy to allow children under 12 in juvenile facilities to be treated at Children's Hospital Oakland instead of John George Hospital, a mental health center for adults.

"What I'd like to do is to come back and offer a sense of normalcy and get business running and stable and give the community the power to elect whoever they want," Steele said. "It has to go back to the community."

Board President Nate Miley and others have expressed concerns that appointing Steele without opening up the process to other interested parties creates another set of problems around fairness.

There is a well-known adage in political life that says "appointment is anointment." It bestows instant incumbent status and an unfair advantage to the recipient. Just look at San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.

Steele, on the other hand, is a publicly vetted neutral party, well versed on the issues, ready to start and willing to go when that time comes.

With at least a half-dozen people already hinting at a campaign run, Steele's return would increase the public perception of a level playing field for all candidates in the next election.